Yiaga Africa and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have said 85,649 Nigerians have registered to vote through their #SixtyPercentOfUs project.
The development partners made this known during a two-day After-Action Review meeting of the project with partners from 14 implementing states.
Development Diaries reports that the organisations launched the project in May 2022 to mobilise young voters to register, collect their permanent voter cards (PVCs) and vote in the February 2023 general election.
The project, it was gathered, strategically focused on the states with low voter registration turnout and PVC collection rates based on data from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Before the start of the project, INEC had noted that the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) figures in Enugu, Imo, FCT, Lagos, Zamfara, Kebbi, Ogun, Ondo, Gombe, Plateau, Nasarawa, Adamawa, Yobe and Benue was less than 100,000.
The aim of the project was to leverage the large number of potential first-time voters who are young people. Although young people between the ages of 18 and 35 make up 51.1 percent of registered voters, only 46 percent of these voters turned out to vote in the 2019 general election.
After the CVR exercise, which ended in July, data from INEC showed that there was an increase of an average of 207% in the aforementioned 14 states.
‘At the end of the presentation and reflection, data collated from across [14] states of implementation revealed that through this intervention by Yiaga Africa and the UNDP, 85,649 young Nigerians have registered to vote, of which 44,667 were female and 40,982 were male’, the organisations said in a statement.
‘The first phase is concluded; now we must get these registered young people to collect their PVCs and vote’, the statement quoted a representative of the UNDP, Deryck Fritz, as saying at the review meeting.
For his part, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, commended the young Nigerians that registered to vote.
‘If Nigeria will change, it will take the patriotism and determination of young Nigerians such as yourself’, he said.
Itodo emphasised that he was impressed to see young men and women who are carrying the burden of a generation that is determined to alter Nigeria’s history.
Photo source: Yiaga Africa
